xdaa374@ut-emx.uucp (William T. Douglass) (10/29/90)
We have a small network of Macs in out building, round 20 machines or so. About 15 are Phonenet-connected, the rest are hooked up to a thick ethernet backbone. We use a FastPath 4 to tie the nets together. We are now experiencing the follwoing problem: Rather consistently (every minute or so), Macs connected to either network will freeze up momentarily, where all activity (mouse movement, keystrokes, etc.) will go ignored. After 2-3 seconds, the machine will come alive again, and any entered keystrokes will show up. This occurs regardless of the amchine type or network hook-up. I suspect the network, because taking the machine off appltalk will resolve the problem. This is a small network with no gateways to the outside world. We have about 12 Mac IIs, 8 Mac SEs, 2 LaserWriters, and the FastPath gateway (running Kstar 8.0). I have defined 2 ethernet zones, one for Phase I & one for Phase II. The gateway is configured as a bridge betweeen the 2 zones. I hope that someone out there might be familiar with our symptoms and take pity on us, as I have little in the way of management tools at this time, and I have been unable to diagnose the trouble. Please email me, and I will send replies to anyone who is interested (or post a summary, if desired.) Thx, -- Bill Douglass, TCADA "I dreamed I was to take a test, in a Dairy Queen, on another planet." L. Anderson
kieffer@UCNET.UCALGARY.CA (Rom Kieffer, TransCanada PipeLines) (10/31/90)
> > We are now experiencing the follwoing problem: > Rather consistently (every minute or so), Macs connected to either > network will freeze up momentarily, where all activity (mouse movement, > keystrokes, etc.) will go ignored. After 2-3 seconds, the machine will > come alive again, and any entered keystrokes will show up. > you don't mention whether the behaviour is application specific, whether it is related to servers, hosts, etc. Maybe if you can supply more information a reader will be able to help. I am experiencing similar problems with Pacer connections via localtalk through a router onto ethertalk to VAX systems. typically users type into an editor and see a considerable echo delay for every character, or sending files to the Mac for display, grinds to a halt until any character on the keyboard is hit. (duplicate node numbers etc have been ruled out.) The network is not excessively busy, and it gets worse when the Mac is directly connected to the ethernet. ( I can understand some of the delay on the ethernet because of the router used would be the last one Pacer heard about). Does anyone out there have experience with this behaviour? rom
is_s440@ux.kingston.ac.uk (10/31/90)
> We are now experiencing the follwoing problem: > Rather consistently (every minute or so), Macs connected to either > network will freeze up momentarily, where all activity (mouse movement, > keystrokes, etc.) will go ignored. After 2-3 seconds, the machine will > come alive again, and any entered keystrokes will show up. > > This occurs regardless of the amchine type or network hook-up. I suspect > the network, because taking the machine off appltalk will resolve the problem. this sounds like one of the symptoms of one of the more common virus' WDef, I think. Usually locks up machines connected to a server for indeterminate times. simon lucas
crowston@athena.mit.edu (Kevin Crowston) (10/31/90)
I'm having pretty much the same problems with my Mac. Every perhaps ten or fifteeen minutes the Mac just freezes for as long as 5 or ten seconds. It happens regardless of the application being run and it does not seem to be correlated with any particular actions, except that it may be more frequent when looking up file names (e.g., when opening a file). However, it doesn't always happen then and I don't think there's any time it doesn't happen. (I will start keeping a log of these events, since I'm now relying on memory.) The Mac is connected via EtherTalk to a Unix machine running CAP and UAB. There are about 10 Macs and a few hundred other machines connected to the EtherNet. The file server is only used by two or three people at a time. The file server is running on a DecStation 3100 and access to files is very quick so I don't think the problem is a too slow file server or an overloaded network. I'm pretty sure it's some how related to the AppleShare client software because it doesn't happen when there are no AppleShare volumes mounted. Also the double arrow network activity indicator stays on during the freeze. I tried looking at the network with an EtherNet monitor during the freeze and saw a (rather leisurely) exchange of packets between the Mac and the file server. Since the Mac is directly on EtherNet, as is the server, I don't think it has anything to do with the routing, but I should look at the packets again to see if the router (we have a GatorBox) is getting in the act. Anyway, the freeze is almost enough to make me want to stop using the file server, so if anyone knows how to stop it, I too would appreciate the advice. Kevin Crowston
johnc@synopsys.com (John Crossley) (11/02/90)
We have just received a Webster Multigate AppleTalk Router. In Appendix B they show the impact of losing packets on the network. AppleShare servers have a 10 to 20 second timeout while waiting for TREL packets (no, I'm not sure what those are either!). This is fine if only one TREL packet is missing. "If two occur during a 30 second period, AppleSahre will stall until 30 seconds have elapsed since the first missing TREL. In these instances, a 1% packet error rate translates a 2 second task into a 12 to 22 second one - approximately an 85% slowdown." Their solution to this situation is to keep your network short and keep the wires away from electrical interference. Hope this helps. John